Swiss Alps Motorcycle Tour September 2017 - Part One.

This is a true bucket list ride for me. I was surprised and pleased that my wife wanted to make the ride with me. A full week is a long ride and Veronica did well in the Swiss weather we rode through. Planing involved finding a bike to rent and buying gear for Veronica. CycleGear had the gear she needed and a bluetooth equipped helmet so we could talk going  down the road. Last year I stopped and checked on rental motorcycles at the two dealers in Basel Switzerland.  The Suzuki-Triumph dealer had several bikes that would work for me, but not with the luggage needed for both of us. The BMW dealer salesperson at first told me they did not rent to riders from the USA. I asked why and was told a US rider rented; got tickets, crashed and flew home. Leaving a mess for the dealer.  It only takes one A-hole to give us all a bad name. I really needed a bike with luggage and the BMW RT filled the bill.  The person I talked with suggested I email the following year to the owner, that I wanted to rent and was a reliable person. I did this explaining that my daughter lived and worked in Basel. Felix the owner wrote me back offering me a 2005 RT or a new GS for rent. Both had the luggage we needed. Being vertically challenged the GS was too tall so the 2005 RT was reserved.   


Following is a day by day journal of our ride. We rode over the following passes: Grimselpass, Furkapass, Sustinpass,  Oberalppass and Julierpass. Hope you enjoy our ride. 

[Note: Click on any picture for full screen of picture. Esc to return.]

Saturday 9-9-17

We took the trolley to the BMW dealer wearing all our gear. Arrived and all was ready for us. 

A light was rain falling, but we were looking for a break in the weather. I was given a tour of the RT and the sales person set up the GPS to English. I was not able to bluetooth the GPS to my Sena headset, not a big problem.  Lots of dings and dents on the old 2005 bike. Fine for our ride and was told not to worry about any small scratches. 



























We took off for our daughters apartment. Our plan was to leave on Sunday. Our daughter filmed us arriving.

Sunday 9-10-27

Got on the road at 10:00 am, waited for some early rain to clear.  We had planned to go to the Tete De Moine cheese factory for a tour. Their website said open on Sunday, rare in Switzerland. Our GPS took us on the freeway, where we did not want to go. We felt we were going the wrong way and it was getting time for lunch. Took the next exit and looked for a place for lunch. Found a small Coop market open that had sandwiches. 

Our first lunch on the bike.

We checked our location on Google maps and could not understand where the GPS had us going. We had gone the wrong way to get to the cheese factory. I reset the GPS to avoid highways and we  headed for Meiringen. The GPS set to avoid highways worked much better. Went over a small low pass by Zurich. Fine road and great views, stopped to check the area and take some pictures. Yes everything does look like a postcard.

Lots of traffic on a Sunday. Went over Brunigpass and dropped into Meiringen, our stop for the next two nights. This was the first Air B&B for just the two of us.  We were a little early so we got the bike parked and looked for a coffee. Needed a calculator to figure out how many Swiss Francs to put in the machine. $11.00 for the night of covered dry parking was a good deal. 

We did find a coffee shop that had some great pastries. 

We split a pastry that looked like a hotdog, it  was filled with a chocolate nut mixture.  

After our snack we headed for our Air B&B to check in and meet our hosts, Kathleen Hennessey and K. C. Hill. Both are Expats from the USA and have been in Switzerland for 25 years. After unloading our gear we went to the Sherlock Homes museum. Found out more about Sherlock than I ever knew. 

Our home for the next two nights. 

Veronica and Sherlock.

Town also known for meringues.

Walked around town looking for a light dinner. Found a restaurant by the rail station.  Veronica had the soup and  I had the smoked salmon plate. We split a flatbread with ham. One thing we are getting used to is you pay for water at dinner. Also many times wine is cheaper than the water. 

Tomorrow we hit some of the higher passes. We plan to ride over Grimselpass, Frukapass and Sustenpass.

Monday 9-11-17

Had a good nights sleep at the Air B&B. Our host had a light breakfast and coffee ready for us. 

All Air B&Bs are different and this one said their dog would be in the house. We had breakfast with "fifi".  

It was a perfect morning with rain overnight. I had checked Alpenpasse and found that Furkapass showed closed by snow .  After our breakfast we walked around town to let it warm a little. The passes are very close and we did not have a long day of riding. We  stopped at a bicycle shop and was told most closed passes open by noon. This was good news, the bicycle shop said we could find out if Furkapass was open when we got over Grimselpass. 

Outside the bike shop they had a vending machine for tires and tubes.  The Swiss just do many things a little different and may times better. 

Rode the Grimselpass up and over. I was impressed with how good the roads were. Tight wide turns and a steep climb up the mountain. In Switzerland the maximum speed limit other than freeways is 80 kph. Sounds like a lot but it is only 49.7 mph, slower than I would like to ride. Veronica said it was just fine. 

We did stop on top to have a look around.  

A couple we saw on top riding Yamaha models you can not buy in the USA.

View looking over the lake, yes it did snow over night. 

Panoramic view of valley we rode up. Note the color of the lake below. It was a slate gray color along with the streams flowing into it. 

View from the bottom of the road we just rode over. Coming down from the top of Grimselpass.

We stopped  for lunch at the bottom. Checked and Furkapass was open. Was much warmer on the bottom of the pass so we dinned outside.  So nice we took a walk around the small village of Gletsch

 where the roads intersected. 

Small church in the parking lot of the inn where we had lunch.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind. Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Looking up at Frukapass from Gletsch. Our red RT in the picture, parked with the other motorcycles.

Even the signs marking where to walk are self explanatory. Veronica liked this one. 

Panoramic of the valley. Grimsel on the left and Fruka on the right. 

Stopped to take a picture as we start up Frukapass. You do feel like you are riding through a Swiss Calendar. Everything is picture perfect in Switzerland. 

Stopped half way up Frukapass. Looking back at the village of Gletsch with Grimselpass going up to the right in the distance. 

The road got twisty as we reached the top. We  even had a cow in the road just after the summit.  It was very windy on top and areas to park were covered with snow, we did not stop. Snow covered the hills but the was road clear.  A small kabota like unit was clearing the snow. No guard rails just cement posts so the snow could be pushed over the edge. Lots of cars and bikes for a weekday.  Weekends must be crowded, I am glad we are going over on a weekday. Got to bottom and couldn't turn left to Stutsenpass. The road was closed.  We asked the police at the turn around and were told  two hours minimum wait. Turned around and headed back up Frukapass and then on to Grimselpass. Backtrack but a whole new view going the other way.

Dark clouds were moving in, thought we might get some rain or snow as we head back to Meiringen. Stopped to get a picture at the metal motorcycle sculpture at the Grimsel summit.

You can see the storm building in the direction we are headed. With luck we will reach our Air B&B before the rain starts.











We did get back before the storm came in. We passed a Michelin rated restaurant walking around this morning and decided to have dinner there.  Dinner at this Michelin restaurant fair to good, but service was not good.  Guess you can not alway trust the reviews.

We started with a smoked trout appetizer as we were told it was fantastic. It was good. 

Veronica had chicken and salad that was very good, chickens in Switzerland have so much more flavor than at home.   Our chicken just doesn't taste the same.

I had the beef stroganoff it came with hash browns? Beef must have been a filet as it was perfect, but hash browns with stroganoff. Note this was not the Swiss Rossi that is very different. 

Tomorrow we have a long ride to St Moritz. We have been watching the weather, looks like it will clear. Two days ago it looked like we would have to cancel the trip to St Moritz.  We will be riding over Sustenpass and might see some snow. 

That ends part one of our trip report. Click here to read part two.

Our trip to the the total eclipse.

8-19-2017

This is a once in a lifetime bucket list trip.  We headed north on Saturday headed for the total eclipse in Oregon. I-5 was heavy with traffic all the way to Weed where we turned off and headed for Lake Shastina, our camp for the night. We did run into smoke from the forest fires around Corning CA, it was to be our companion for a long time.   Lake Shastina was a free camp site I found on freecampsites.net a great site that lists NFS and other campsites a little or no cost to camp. Expected the campground to be full but were surprised that many sites were open. 

Our camp for the night, smoke so thick in the sky you could look at the sun. 

Sunset was red, the pictures do not do the color justice. 

A couple of happy campers.

We did a walk around the campground and had a steak on the grill for dinner. Most campers were in tents, they are still true campers. There were only a couple of big RV's who spent the night. 














Sunday our plan was to head north back on I-5 to Central Point OR and the Rogue Cheese Factory. I-5 was packed with traffic as it had been the day before. We stopped and looked at Ashland OR; had coffee at the Growler Brothers coffee and beer shop. Had to send a picture of the beer taps to my son in law Ryan. 

We had reserved two nights at Crater Lake NP a full year ago. Our plan was to get up early and drive to the area of the eclipse. After seeing the amount of traffic and listening to the radio we changed our plans. We would look for a place to stay tonight were we could see the eclipse without moving the truck. Found three possibilities on web and decided to head for Sisters Bolder just out of Sisters OR. First we needed to try the Rogue River Blue cheese. If you are in the area the Rogue River Cheese factory is a great stop.  

Lots of samples of their cheese and they were sampling Balsamic vinegar served over the blue cheese and a pear slice on a crisp cracker. Yes we had to buy a bottle. They also had grilled cheese sandwiches and a made in house rootbeer.  We left full and with cheese for the fridge. 


Next we were off to  Crater Lake to check in so we did not lose our campsite and then off to Sisters Bolder.  Highway 62 out of Medford to Crater Lake was a nice road with very little traffic. We are still in the smoke and can see fires in the distance. We checked in to Crater Lake and found a campsite. Large signs that they have a water shortage, showers were limited on time and may be cold. Not sure how heating water and the shortage ties together.  We took the north rim drive around the lake back to Hwy 97. There were several miles of gravel road and construction. Traffic picked up when we got to Hwy 97, our plan to drive up today was looking good.  We found Sisters Bolder and it was not as described.  We did pop up the camper and looked around. In the trees with limited view of the sky, not good for viewing the eclipse. Also the area did not have a good feel to it. Joint decision was made to try our second choice Skull Hollow campground north east of Redmond OR.  Almost sure the campground would be full but thought we could find somewhere near to camp. The campground was full but we drove around and checked it out. The camp host stopped us and said all was full,  he told us down the road we could find camping. Nice guy who was over run with campers. 

Just up the dirt road we saw two other pop up campers and asked if we could join their camp. Nice people and we set up camp. 

Great spot with a clear view of the sky. Just a few clouds that were forecast to clear tomorrow. 

Quiet night with just a few campers coming into camp late. Woke up to clear skies and no smoke. This was the day we were waiting for. 

Chairs and table set up for the big event. 

Our view over the valley, clear and no smoke. 

The eclipse starts slow as we watch through our glasses. At around 80% you can feel it start to cool off. At 99% it is still light and you can not look at the sun without glasses. At 100% it gets cold, cannot see anything through the glasses. WOW look at the sun and see the corona in a dark sky, stars are out and there is a 360 degree sunrise.  We had about 1min and 30 seconds of totality. The experience far exceeded my expectations. 

Did not take a lot of pictures, the pros can get better shots than us with our Iphones.  We just took it all in, an experience I will not soon forget.

Note it was much darker than the pictures with our Iphones made it look. 













After the sun started to return many people started to leave and try and beat the traffic. We closed up the camper and joined the fun. There were cars parked everywhere along side the small roads out of Redmond.  We got on 97 for a long trip to Crater lake.  May have taken 2 hours long extra to make the drive to Crater Lake. Several small towns had one stop light.  Traffic was backed up for miles for the light,  took 30 minutes or more to get through each of the small towns. 





We left the traffic behind when we turned off Hwy 97 to Crater Lake. As we drove up the mountain we also drove back into the smoke. 

Smoke was filling the basin around Crater Lake.

Would have been a beautiful view without the smoke. 

You could see the fires as we drove in on the north rim.   Really sad to see the forest on fire. 

More fires in the distance, this area needs rain. 
















We had made reservations at the Crater Lake Lodge for dinner.  We always try to have dinner at the great lodges of our National Parks. It as been 25 years since we have dined at Crater Lake.  There was a nature talk before our dinner and we enjoyed learning some history about Crater Lake. The park rangers do a great job.  We have dined at Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion Canyon and Glacier National Parks. 

Enjoying the view in a rocking chair on the deck of the Crater Lake Lodge. 

These plates could be older than I am. You do get great service at the lodges. 

Our walk along the rim trail after dinner.   Will have to come back when the smoke is gone.  

This tree is still living and hanging on. Summer is short at Crater lake. We have tried to go in June and the park was closed because of snow.

Our final picture of Crater Lake before heading for the campground and our last night on the road.

Tuesday we got up and headed for home.  Hwy 97 was still heavy with traffic, slowing at every traffic light. Picked up I-5 at Weed, traffic was like driving into the San Francisco bay area.  Moving fast and heavy.  I was glad it was moving and not stop and go.  If the schedule works we might try to see the next eclipse April 8, 2024. Might see the eclipse twice in  a lifetime.  

Next trip click here